Monday morning's announcement is unprecedented in that the NCAA normally conducts a long investigation, presents its findings and suggested penalties to the school, and then the school accepts/appeals the suggested penalties before any sanctions go into action.

The money will go to an endowment preventing child sexual abuse or assisting victims.

It CANNOT affect some of the non-revenue sports who depend on football to operate properly (i.e. volleyball or cross country), nor can the fine negatively affect Penn State's scholarship athletes. Emmert says Penn State must find another way to pay the fine.

He also characterizes the $60 million as being equivalent to the football program's yearly revenue, but in actuality PSU will pay $12 million a year for five years to this endowment.

Four year postseason ban

Similar to USC a few years ago it can't participate in any bowl games or conference championship games no matter how good its record may be.

There are two years left in the current BCS postseason contract before the four-team college football playoff begins following the 2014 regular season. This ban covers the first two years of the new postseason format as well.

President Emmert says Penn State "must appoint an independent, NCAA-selected Athletics Integrity Monitor, who will oversee compliance with the agreement."

Failure to comply with conditions of the sanctions would result in "additional, more severe" penalties.

Emmert summed up the sanctions thusly:

"Penn State can focus on the work of rebuilding its athletic culture, not worrying about whether or not its going to a bowl game."

From an on-the-field standpoint, the penalties will be significant in that players can leave the program immediately and it will be much harder to recruit players to PSU with the scholarship reduction and postseason ban. Additionally, Penn State was already falling toward the middle/low end of the pack in the Big Ten so this will only speed up its demise.

Although Penn State was not officially given the death penalty, some have argued this is more severe because it cripples the program for a number of years. As soon as details of the sanctions began to leak out our thought was that the NCAA's penalties were intended to be harsh enough to potentially force the school to shut down the football team on its own. Seeing as this is Penn State we don't see that happening, however.

Find out everything you need to know about the Penn State sanctions in 100 seconds below: